Living in the The Ultimate Fighter House Sucks

In a recent story with Neil Davidson (of the Canadian Press), Travis Lutter (9-3 MMA, 2-2 UFC) confirmed what most of us already know: living in The Ultimate Fighter house while on the Spike TV reality series sucks. It sucks hard. And it sucks long.

Lutter, who won the fourth season of the popular show (which featured UFC veterans rather than newcomers), will meet UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva (17-4, MMA, 2-0 UFC) at Saturday’s UFC 67 as a reward for his winning efforts. Not only did Lutter have to fend off seven other middleweight hopefuls, the South Dakota native had to survive 42 days of hell.

“I hated it. I think it’s the worst thing that I’ve ever done in my life, being in that house for six weeks.

“No TV, no Internet, no magazines, no books. When they take away all those sources of input, the boredom level is just incredible. And after the first week, you had all the same conversations. Nobody has anything new to talk about, because they don’t have any input. And you’ve talked about basically everything that you’re going to get out of them. And then what? You just start to lose your damn mind.”

Watching the cast members slowly lose their minds actually provided some humor during the series. Who could forget Mikey Burnett’s effort — in an ultimate fit of boredom — to charge through one of the house’s main walls? The demo expo was preceded by a food fight, practical jokes (placing water buckets above doorways) and general harassment of Charles “Captain Miserable” McCarthy.

While those moments did provide some levity, the UFC should really consider tweaking the format this season. The show’s producers dropped the weekly team challenges after the second season (which was a feature of the show I actually enjoyed), and other than watching a few guys get drunk and make asses out of themselves, footage of the fighters in the house has been rather boring. Anyone have any ideas?

Anyway, the piece on Lutter is actually pretty good, which is typical of Davidon’s stories.

Check it out at canada.com for more information about Lutter’s past and his thoughts on Saturday’s main-event bout with Silva.

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